


darkness shining

by bloodsweatspit



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Marijuana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27032674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsweatspit/pseuds/bloodsweatspit
Summary: they’re both liars but it works for them. (cw: mentions of alcohol & cannabis use)
Relationships: Alston Cerveza/Cedric Spliff
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Canada Moist Talkers Fanfiction





	darkness shining

the first thing that either of them said to the other was a lie.

cedric said, “hey, i’m cedric, it’s awesome  
to be here!”

alston shook his hand and said, “my name is alston cerveza.”

cedric thinks about that a lot, now. he still doesn’t know alston’s real name - it certainly isn’t anthoine, or ahmed, or anything else alston’s ever gone by. for his part, cedric still doesn’t think it’s particularly awesome to be anywhere except seattle. (if he did have to be somewhere else, he sure as shit wouldn’t have picked sunken halifax. NYC, maybe; he’s technically too old to be a mill, but it’s a city full of marks just waiting to be grifted.) of course, cedric’s lie was an order of magnitude different. a social nicety, not... whatever alston’s lies are.

and oh, boy, does alston have lies. that first day, cedric let alston take him out for a beer after the game. over the course of what became several beers, a shared order of garlic fingers eaten in the street, more beers, some shots?, and half a dozen joints, alston told approximately seven different stories about where he was from. three involved the welsh mob. five involved an extravagant inheritance from an estranged or deceased father. one involved actual fucking time travel. cedric just nodded and grinned and said “whoa, really?” or “no way” at the appropriate moments.

the thing is, even when he’s lying at peak absurdity, alston is fun. cedric just... likes being around the guy. he’s never seen alston do anything malicious or lie for any particular benefit - it’s just, like, a nervous tic or something. like he’ll go to drop some clothes off at the laundromat and the girl behind the counter won’t even be trying to make small talk, and out of nowhere alston will just blurt out, like, “can you recommend a restaurant in the neighborhood? i’m new in town, just arrived from a year abroad in sumatra,” even though cedric is 99% sure that alston couldn’t point out sumatra on a map or name the country it’s in. (cedric, on the other hand, not only knows that it’s an island in indonesia, he also knows it has two provinces named north and south sumatra. he spends a lot of time getting baked and looking at google maps.)

but so that’s the thing, is alston will say something like that, and then as they leave the laundromat cedric will be like, “ _sumatra_ , huh? you never told me about that,” and alston won’t even miss a beat going into some spiel about how well he actually had to land a blimp there to refuel during an escape from welsh assassins, so no he hasn’t spent _time_ in sumatra but he’s _been_ there, and then cedric will say “listen i’ve had three million layovers flying through las vegas but i don’t go around saying i’ve been to vegas,” and then they’re having one of those delightful arguments people who are close to each other can have, the kind that feel like playing a game or doing improv together, where no one actually cares about the outcome and it’s easy to drop it, still smiling, once they’ve worn the subject out.

so the upshot of it is, cedric is fine with the lying. besides, it’s not like he’s a fuckin’ boy scout (he still feels kinda guilty about the “console” he sold vapor, even if the kid hasn’t figured it out yet.) he tries not to pull that kind of shit on alston too much. keeps it to little things. sneaking a five out of alston’s wallet when he drops it while drunk and cedric picks it up. taking a couple old hotel mini-soaps from inside alston’s bathroom cabinet when he stays over one night. that kinda thing.

but sometimes, especially when they’re lying in bed together - when alston’s drunk enough that he’ll lay still, stop searching for the exits, let go of the tension that normally keeps him wound up and ready to run - sometimes, cedric will trace his fingertips along alston’s blurry tattoos and wonder. the one on his back looks like it might have been a poem or a bible verse, once. the one on his left bicep could be the sun, a set of runes, a compass. cedric thinks about what he might see if he were able to squint hard enough to bring alston’s past into focus. what name he might hear underneath the loud claims of aliases.

and then alston turns over and nuzzles his face into cedric’s shoulder. cedric thinks about how he is in the daytime. how impossible it is to hold him still, let alone get close enough to see his long beautiful eyelashes or the tiny mole next to his ear. cedric kisses the top of alston’s head and pulls him closer. he lets his own eyelids grow heavy with sleep. the truth is slippery and twists itself into new shapes so easily; if this is the shape it takes right now, cedric is pretty okay with that.


End file.
